Hot MedFax

Here's a horrifying fact.  We're giving ourselves cancer .  Or so says a New York Times op-ed. Rita F. Redberg and Rebecca Smith-Bindman write that all the CT scans and MRI's and PET scans and full-body imaging we get for just about anything medical are assaulting our bodies with radiation, which, as we all know, can cause cancer.  (I had 6 1/2 weeks of radiation for breast cancer and I think about that all the time.) " The use of medical imaging with high-dose radiation — CT scans in particular — has soared in the last 20 years," according to the writers. "Our resulting exposure to medical radiation has increased more than sixfold between the 1980s and 2006. . . The radiation doses of CT  scans. . . are 100 to 1,000 times higher than conventional X-rays." They give credit to the technologies for early diagnosis (which, I suppose, I certainly should be grateful for), but note " there is distressingly little evidence of better health outcomes ...

Thinking of having an echocardiogram to ferret out those chest pains?  Or an annual pap smear, if you're a 30-to-65-year-old woman?  Or a CT scan of your son's head after he falls off his bike? Fuhgaddeaboutit.  A new study has found that doctors are saying that everything from using feeding tubes in people with advanced dementia to CT scans for minor head injuries is not necessary and should not be done, according to a story by Bruce Japsen at forbes.com. He writes that doctors themselves recognize the lack of necessity for many tests that have been routinely done for decades.  In fact, Japsen writes, they've come up with 90 tests that we're all better off not having. On the same topic, flu shots arenot working in patients over 65, the most vulnerable age group.  Mike Stobbe of the Associated Press reports that, "the vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this sea...